Always, Never
by amberpire
Summary: She places her palm on top of the grass and breathes in slow and deep because Nick can't anymore and she never could have imagined that anything would hurt this badly but God, it does. ;Melissa-centric drabble;


Nick's grave became almost what his bedroom had been for Melissa. She didn't plan on spending as much time there as she did, but nearly every afternoon when the last bell rang, she found her feet following the familiar path from the chattered square that is Chance Harbor High past the crowded docks and onto the quiet, shaded street where the small town's cemetery sits. The silence there isn't the eerie, haunted void that most would expect. In fact, Melissa finds a lot of comfort there, sitting on her knees in front of Nick's headstone with the only sound being the distant quacks of ducks off in the pond near the center of the cemetery.

Almost a month after Nick's death, she's still visiting on too regular of a basis. The cemetery security guards know her by name. They make it a point to keep Nick's headstone clear of weeds strictly for her sake. They treat her like a widow, all too familiar with the hollowness that possess her dark eyes, the emptiness of her smile as she thanks them for cleaning bird waste from the polished stone bearing Nick's name. They are kind to her, and she sits wordlessly six feet above Nick's buried body more days out of the week than not for sometimes hours at a time, mourning in the only way she knows how.

God had never been an existence she ever subjected herself to. She never went to church or even cracked open a Bible in her lifetime. It all seemed too hokey to her, too riddled with faults - but when Faye had spoken the words_ he's dead_ that night after the demon had possessed her, after the initial shock and the panicked howling and the hours spent mindlessly screaming into her pillow broken with sobs and unable to form a coherent thought other than_ he's dead he's dead he's dead_, Melissa had prayed for the first time. She had clenched her hands under her chin, shaking at the edge of her bed, and begged to whatever entity that may or may not exist to please, please take Nick to a safe, happy place because too much had happened to him that he didn't deserve and that he was a being capable of love - she had seen it, had felt it, knew it to be true, even if no one else saw it but her.

It's Friday. Drifting through school in the same frozen, numb state she seems to have been stuck in for so long, Melissa leaves an hour before she's supposed to and weaves her way toward the cemetery. Some days were worse than others and this was one of them, when it took all of her conscious effort to keep her heart at a steady beat, to keep her lungs operating properly. It wasn't rare that she simply forgot about those things, when she would find herself red in the face and sucking in a breath through her nose almost viciously. She could sense Nick there at those times, hovering near her, mumbling a mild joke about her dramatic behavior. Picturing his snide remarks would give her the closest inkling of happiness that she could manage.

It had rained in the afternoon, leaving the grass damp beneath feet as she walks between the tall, black iron gates into the cemetery. Blacktop trails twirl off over the hill that leads to the older, faded headstones toward the back that contain citizens of Chance Harbor dating well into the nineteenth century. Her mother's grave is closer to the pond. She visits her, sometimes, as well - but her death was drastically different from Nick's. Melissa's mother had died when she was just a baby. She supposed she loved her mother as much as she could considering the circumstances, but her pull to Nick was far stronger. She had known him physically, mentally, emotionally - had told him she loved him to his face. Her mother had never been that person, unfortunately, and on the days she did gravitate toward her mother's headstone, she always weaved her way back to Nick, comforted by the fact that he had been someone she had a firm memory of.

The grass soaks her jeans as she kneels before Nick's name. His parents are beside him. Almost ritually, Melissa gives the older graves a respectful nod. She's sure that if they hadn't died, they would have approved of her relationship with their son. She'had done her best to bring out the good in Nick. She knows she had succeeded in that which made all of this so much harder. Nick was becoming an actual boyfriend instead of a kid she occasionally slept with. He had feelings, thoughts, a heart - and it was beautiful. He was beautiful.

Melissa stills her lower lip with her teeth, digging them deep into the plump flesh. A fingertip lifts and traces the _Armstrong_ of Nick's last name. She looks at the years indicating his birth and his death. She places her palm on top of the grass and breathes in slow and deep because Nick can't anymore and she never could have imagined that anything would hurt this badly but God, it does.

"I miss you," she whispers to a body that can't hear, that's buried in the earth, an empty vessel that's completely useless now. Her eyes shift instead to the sky. "I miss you," she repeats, louder this time, like her voice could somehow penetrate whatever plane that separates her from wherever Nick is.

She refuses to believe that Nick went nowhere, that his spirit - his being, _him_ - was just snuffed out. Gone. If there is such a thing as magic, then there has to be such a thing as an afterlife. And Melissa sincerely believes that he had been a good enough person to make it in, to deserve peace. None of her friends had understood her attraction to Nick. Melissa hadn't either, really. Not at first. Diana and Faye and even Adam warned her that nothing but harm was going to come her way, that Nick would do nothing but hurt her. He had done just that in the beginning. Melissa hates to think of all the time she wasted being mad at him when he was only doing what his older brother had taught him to do - to remain distant, to stay away, to keep himself from going in too deep in anything.

But she caught glimpses of a good person beneath the tough skin Nick had grown. He would peek out when they had sex (made love) as Nick panted Melissa's name into her ear, holding her gently by the hips, or when he would drape the blankets over her shoulders on chilly nights, the one time he spent hours trying to find a lost dog's owner - he tried so hard to play the bad boy when he was nothing but a gentle soul.

Near the end, he had peeled back the layers that made him too tough to love. He let her in. He kissed her in public, called her his girlfriend, inched open the cage door a little bit at a time until she could slip inside and see the world through his eyes. Faye had told her that while she had been possessed, Nick had not stopped fluttering around her, positively distraught with worry. For some reason, that made her feel so much better, that even though she hadn't been in control of her own body, Nick had stayed close, had cared about her and, more importantly, loved her, until the end.

"I love you," she says, and she's crying without trying to, the tears leaving wet trails on her cheeks before dangling off her chin and plummeting to the grass. "I'll always love you."

She can hear him - his soft voice he always used when he was trying to reassure her, lined as usual with a joking tone, like he was on the verge of cracking something hilarious. She can see him using the pad of his thumb to wipe her tears away and tracing her lips and bringing her forehead to hers and whispering _that's enough of this, Lis. Be strong. Be strong for me._

Melissa winces, shakes her head, digs her fingernails into the dirt like she's going to try and dig him out.

_If you're not happy, I'll never be at peace._

A strangled cry crawls out of her throat. It hurts, it hurts so much -

_I love you, baby._

She nods. She knows. She always knew. Her arms cross over her stomach and she rocks forward, bowed over Nick's grave, leaning forward until she can kiss the wet grass. It takes her a few minutes to regain herself, using the back of her hand to dry her face before raising her head and looking at Nick's name. She swallows. Breathes. Nods again.

"Okay." Melissa touches his name once more before shifting to her feet. She stares down at his grave, breath caught in her throat, tears burning behind her eyes.

She walks away. She walks away and doesn't look back and even though she knows there will be no instant recovery, no sudden feeling of being over it, and that, for the rest of her life, this will likely hurt her more than anything else, she has to take steps forward. For Nick's sake. Because he would have wanted her to.

The next day, she walks by the cemetery, but doesn't go in. The day after, she stays home.

A week later, the cemetery security guards are still trimming around Nick's grave and whispering down to the boy, "That girl will never stop loving you."

* * *

><p><strong>AN**: _And then this happened? I don't know. _

_I just love Melissa and Nick's death seemed to be skimmed over in one episode too lightly, so I wanted to address it in my own way._


End file.
